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cy-cyborg · 2 days
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Proximity to disability is not the same as living with it - Writing disability quick tips
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[ID: An image with “Writing Disability quick tips: Proximity to disability is not the same as living with it” written in chalk the colour of the disability pride flag, from left to right, red, yellow, white, blue and green. Beside the text are 2 poorly drawn people icons in blue, one is standing, the other is in a wheelchair. /end id]
One of the really common ways people push back against disabled people trying to give them feedback on how they’ve depicted disability in their work shows up as something along the lines of, “Well I have a child/parent/grandparent/friend with that disability, so I don’t need to consult other disabled people because I already know what a life like that is like!”
I see the most vehement pushback like this from parents of disabled children. the parents who are their child's advocates, their carers, they see everything their kids go through and have been with them through it all, so they "know what they're talking about already". And the thing about that is, while it means you have much, much more experience with the disability in question, it's not the same as direct experience living with it. Don't get me wrong, it's still an incredibly valuable experience to have, I'm not saying to disregard it, but it's not the same as having that disability. And when you're writing about characters who are disabled, and telling those stories to a public who already have a lot of misinformation about us going in, that lived experience is very, very important.
This isn't unique to parents of course, like I said, I've seen the same kind of pushback from children, friends and other loved ones of disabled people, and honestly, as someone who's been on both sides of the conversation (being a disabled person, but also having loved ones with disabilities different to my own), I do get where it comes from. But no matter how close you are with your disabled loved one, no matter how much you talk, no matter how much they explain everything, unless you yourself have that same disability, it's incredibly hard to understand the details of what life with a disability is like.
Let me use my partner as an example:
Often times, before these larger articles go up, I run them by my partner to ensure the tone and message I want to get across is actually what’s being conveyed. Which means he’s read pretty much every single article I’ve written on this blog. We talk about disability representation and tropes a lot, and he is one of the only people who sees my unmasked and unfiltered reactions to media when it’s done poorly. He’s also done a great deal of his own research on the subject, and worked with other disability sensitivity readers for his own writing projects. Not to mention, well, we live together, he sees pretty much every part of my day-to-day life and he’s one of the only people who doesn't share my disability who I talk to about the more complex emotions that come with it.
I think it’s pretty fair to say he’s quite knowledgeable on the subject of living with the specific disabilities I have for someone who doesn't have them. Despite that though, he still makes mistakes. He still misses things, and sometimes, internalised ableism - something everyone has, even disabled people - still creeps its way into his work. So do mistakes he simply didn't consider to run past me or his sensitivity readers. It’s not because he’s not listening or not trying, I’d confidently say he’s gone above and beyond in that regard, but it still happens. He still misses things that seem so obvious to me, specifically because of my lived experience as a disabled person who has to deal with these things all the time. It’s not unique to him either. A lot of people in my life are aware of the issues I talk about, but struggle to recognise them in practice or struggle to understand why them being depicted poorly is a problem.
This isn't to discourage creators from trying, mind you. But just to serve as a reminder that everyone makes mistakes, and that's ok, so long as you're still trying and still listening. No matter how close you are to a disabled person, no matter how much work or effort you put into unlearning things like internalised ableism, it's still going to pop up occasionally. And that's fine, but it means that you still need to be open to the criticism you get from people with that disability.
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lackadaisycats · 1 month
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Since it's Indie Animation Day...
I figured I'd repost that list of other animation creators on YouTube that I shared last week, separate from it's original, weird context. I've also included several more entries based on suggestions in the comments. Thanks for the feedback! General Content Warning: Some of the below is not for kids, or contains violence or other subject matter some viewers might find distressing. Please use your adult discretion. Also, this is not a list of moral endorsements. I know some of these creators personally, but many of them I do not. While I have tried to make sure I'm not listing anyone who is a criminal or otherwise objectively harmful person, I don't have encyclopedic knowledge of every little internet drama that has gone down (and chances are I'm not super interested in hearing about it all because it's really difficult to tell fact from fiction from hyperbole around here).
Anyway, check out some Indie Animation:
Far-Fetched Worthikids Satina | Scumhouse Noodle and Bun Punch Punch Forever Ramshackle Noodle Papajoolia | Pipi Angel Hare | The East Patch Jonni Peppers Salad Fingers Monkey Wrench Studio Heartbreak Felix Colgrave JelloApocalypse Odd1sout (started indie, got picked up by Netflix) Allie Mehner JaidenAnimations Lumi and the Great Big Galaxy Cloudrise | The Worlds Divide Telepurte RubberRoss James Lee ENA Godspeed | Olan Rogers Ollie and Scoops Meat Canyon Port by the Sea Kekeflipnote Boxtown Kevin Temmer Weebl Joel Haver CircleToons Long Gone Gulch Atlas and the Stars Animist Skibidi Toilet A Fox in Space Alex Henderson Talon Toniko Pantoja Sr. Pelo Hullabaloo Kane Pixels (started indie, picked up by A24) Homestar Runner Fennah Gods' School Alan Becker Dungeon Flippers JazLyte Psychicpebbles (started indie, Smiling Friends picked up by AS) Piemations vewn Metal Family Dead Sound chluaid Jacknjellify Betsy Lee | No Evil My Pride Cranbersher GeoExe | Gwain Saga Horatio the Vampire Mech West Playground | Rodrigo Sousa The Brave Locomotive Finchwing (+ check out other Warrior Cats animators) Quazies SamBakZa Kamikaze: Trial by Fire Parasomnia
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ineffectualdemon · 1 year
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Please reblog
I'm interested in the answer but also kinda want to prove a point
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drchucktingle · 9 months
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free choice day
we are all creators bud. you start creating the moment you arrive on this timeline and your creation radiates from there in infinite waves that go on and on and on. the artwork you decide to make is up to you
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spirk-trek · 1 month
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I bought this BEAUTIFUL print from @sevvrael, who is donating all proceeds to charity for Palestine. See their post for all the details and here is their etsy shop!
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theblueflower05 · 5 months
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PLEASE.
If anyone knows who the creator is behind this beautiful art-
PLEASE TAG THEM.
They deserve so much praise. I had to post these here to try to find them. They are so so beautiful. Lie the feelings they emote…my gosh.
Magical and romantic and mysterious and sexy. Like. Seriously. Holy shit these are insanely good.
They literally just resparked my inspiration, I want to cry right now. Ugh. I love this fandom.
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rosesnwater · 3 months
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Content Warnings and A Lesson From Lore Olympus
As some of you may know, I write a comic, which i occasionally post about here. I'd like to address a conversation around creators and content warnings in this post as well as the general tremd of authors overstating whats happening in their story. I've seen it come up recently in webtoon discourse within my own comic.
So first off, right after my three page prologue I have an authors note that details all the topics my comic will be going into throughout the course of the story.
It follows:
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These are ALL the issues I tackle within the comic and I leave it here so people can decide whether they want to continue with the story. I have labeled my story as mature. There is a warning when anyone accesses the comic for the first time on both Webtoons and Tapas. I also have warnings that come in three degrees that I place before each episode that handles one of the mature themes I mention. However, what I don't do is tell the reader what they're going to see before they see it. I don't like doing this for a couple reason, some of the most important being, I think makes the story redundant because it's already explaining what's going to happen and this in turn disrupts the narrative.
I understand why people feel strongly about warnings and making content safe on a platform with a young audience. However, seeing as this is a work I have invested a considerable amount of time in, that I'm offering for people to enjoy (which i enjoy doing), I believe it is important I tell the story in my own way.
When you pick up a book you may get a warning in the synopsis (although I find this is rare) or in other people's online reviews of the book BUT you have to go looking for those reviews. As a creator I can only testify to my own experience, but like novels, comics are stories and in my own work, the story should NOT be bisected by warnings expressly stating what's going to happen in each episode.
I feel this speaks to a general increased uninvolvement in the material readers are reading and a lack of reading comprehension to the point authors think it necessary to guide their audience through their story.
There has been a decent amount of discourse in the UnpopularLoreOlympus reddit thread about readers reading comprehension. It is now common practice to have images like the one bellow before an episode.
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On more than one occasion Rachel has put warning paragraphs at the end of her episode stating without any subtext what EXACTLY a character meant during the episode, even though readers would ideally understood the subtext as communicated by the narrative.
And before that she would have warnings signs like this before episodes where the content would be present:
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The above warning is actually quite common amongst comics but it should NOT be required by the audience. If an author is doing their job, they'll have the proper box ticked off when submitting their webtoon
SPOILERS FOR MANY WORKS OF FICTION.
No one tells you at the beginning of jane Eyre that there will be violence, death of children, and abuse, let alone where these incidents will occur.
The hunger games won't warn you before the start of a chapter that there will be starvation or gruesome depictions of character death or content describing mental illness.
Most movies will have warning before the whole movie but they won't briefly cut out of the narrative to tell you what's about to happen and people shouldn't expect comic artists to do this either.
As a comic creator i am rellyng upon my audience's discretion to decide on whether or not a story is safe for their consumption. However, I'm adamant in my own work that that's where my required involvement ends.
I will explain things in the comments or answer reader questions, i will be happy doing so because i get to engage with people on something Ive spent hours creating. I will go onto my discord and jump into the deep world building or explain a particular scene, but this should not be required.
Holding authors accountable for going thoroughly over the controversial issues every episode they post is unreasonable and honestly (for me) damaging to the creative work. We end up with situations like lore olympus where authors are there to explain every warning and subtext to the audience without any work on the readers part.
I know this may be controversial to some, but as a creator, it's something that's bothered me for a while and something I think we should be able to talk about in the artistic community.
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nasa · 1 year
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Digital Creators: Apply to Watch Astronauts Launch to Space with NASA
Do you spend a lot of time online? Would you like to see our next crew of astronauts lift off to the International Space Station?
We're looking for digital content creators of all backgrounds to join us at Kennedy Space Center in Florida for our Crew-6 mission to the space station, set to lift off no earlier than Sunday, Feb. 26. Applications close Friday, Jan. 27 at 3 p.m. EST (2000 UTC)—we'd love to see you there! Apply now.
Can't make this one? Click here to stay updated about future opportunities.
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ashacadence · 7 months
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The layers of anxiety and excitement in this for everyone. Just when someone shows an iota of interest it’s that swell of omg you really wanna know then the terror of omg they wanna know more. You then proceed to search through your entire brain like some aggressive investigator searching for clues to present while also being calculating of how much to tell as well because one you don’t want to give away too much in risk of exposing spoilers or arcs that lead to deep character lore or development yet you need enough to be engaging and seem cool and hip! It’s also that comfort level too if omg this is my baby like my baby do not take. You may hold and adore but give back. But it’s also like when you yourself want to ask a creative person you always feel invasive in a way and also just a bother sometimes yet it’s hard to get over that bump and still come across genuine and really wanna know or ask instead of being a observer or spectator and want some light on something that helps you connect dots but still be engaging enough of a fan.
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lovelyfirebouquet · 8 months
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If you're an artist? I love you.
If you're an author? I love you.
If you crochet or knit? I love you.
If you sew? I love you.
If you're a carpenter? A painter? An architect? A shoemaker?
Create, love, continue bringing beauty in the world and leaving your mark. You are incredible, and I hope pieces of you keep making people happy long after you're gone.
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warandpeas · 6 months
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Patreon Goal
Backing us on Patreon can be the same as buying us a coffee each month. But it’s much more than that: Your support allows us to keep working as independent cartoonists. That enables us to publish the biggest chunk of our comics for free on the internet – meaning more comics for everyone! Supporting us on Patreon helps us focus on our next passion projects, create new characters and write new…
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cy-cyborg · 1 month
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The Jaws Effect and what it means for media representation
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The Jaws Effect is the name of a phenomenon that described the panic and fear that sprang up around sharks, fuelled by Steven Spielberg's movie, Jaws. While the fear of sharks and other marine predators had always been a thing, Jaws launched the fear of sharks, and Great White Sharks in particular, to new (and mostly unfounded) heights. Most people will never encounter a real-life shark and so their only knowledge about the creatures come from movies and other forms of entertainment. Entertainment that largely portrayed them as mindless, unfeeling killing machines. After Jaws, sharks became a staple in the creature-feature genre of movies, which only perpetuated the idea of sharks as dangerous monsters even further, reigniting and reconfirming the beliefs the public held about them in the process. These ideas about sharks are, of course, not true, but the misconception and fear has had a real, observable impacts on shark populations, shark conservation efforts and even laws and legislations surrounding sharks and shark conservation around the world.
Ok but Cy, this is a blog about disability and disabled representation, what do sharks have to do with anything you talk about? Well, Because The Jaws Effect is just one of many examples that shows how massive of an impact representation in the media can have, for better or for worse, especially when talking about subjects the public generally knows very little about.
This conversation is not unique to disability representation, nearly every person I've seen who's talked about how to write and design characters from any minority brings it up eventually, but the media we consume, the movies we watch, the books we read can all have big impacts on people's perceptions on those topics. When talking about disability specifically, it's an unfortunate reality that not many people know all that much about us, and so, much like sharks, for many, their only real exposure to disabled people is through the media they consume.
If you don't know anyone in a wheelchair, and your only knowledge of life as a wheelchair user comes from books and movies like Me Before You, of course you're going to (spoiler) come away thinking that life in a wheelchair is horrible and death is better than living like that. If you don't know any DID Systems and your only exposure to a condition like that is through movies like Split (and honestly, a number of other horror movies and crime shows) of course you'll think people with DID are unstable monsters who could become violent any moment. If your only exposure to autistic people is Music, then it's not shocking that you might think Autistic people are "trapped in their own minds," completely unaware of the world around them and lacking any kind of agency. As much as I'd like to be able to say these are "just movies" or "just books," and that if we don't like them, we can just not watch them, they all had an impact on the real world and real people's perceptions of the disabilities they depicted, as do the many, many smaller examples of bad representation.
This is why I personally spend so much time focused on the portrayal of disability in the media, why so much of my content is focused on creating resources for creators to represent us better, and why I think writers, artists and other types of creators should care about the representation they include.
Unfortunately, people believing misinformation and stereotypes, while annoying, isn't the worst of the impacts bad rep can have. If a stereotype is prevalent enough, and enough people believe it, it can both put us in harms way and cause us to loose access to things we desperately need and things designed to help us. One really common example of this is when movies and TV shows show a character getting up out of their wheelchair, and use this as proof that the person is faking being disabled. However, in reality, there are many disabilities that might mean someone has to use a wheelchair, even if they can still walk a little bit or stand up. The stereotype of someone standing up from their chair being a fake, especially when it's reinforced over and over again in the media, leads non-disabled people to believe that anyone who stands up from their wheelchair is faking, and results in a lot of real disabled people being harassed and denied things like access to disabled parking, toilets and other accessible spaces. There were even a few cases of people reporting those they see get out of their wheelchairs to Centrelink (The Australian "welfare" department, for those not familiar) as frauds, and while these investigations don't usually go far before someone realises what's happened, it has, on occasion, resulted in people loosing the income they depend on to survive, even temporarily.
But the impact of representation, of course, can go both ways.
I was in high school when the first How To Train Your Dragon movie came out, and at the time, I didn't really like people being able to see that I was a leg amputee because I was sick of kids in particular staring, pointing at me, asking their parents "what's wrong with them?" or asking me directly, "what's wrong with your legs?". I wore long skirts and big, bulky tracksuit pants to keep my legs covered, something that became dangerous in the hot Australian summer, but I didn't care.
But the impact of How to Train Your Dragon came in two ways. The first, was that it was one of the first times I'd seen an amputee (or rather, multiple amputees) who didn't keep their prosthetics covered or hidden, and it gave me the little boost in confidence I needed to do that myself and wear clothing that was more comfortable and functional. And second, the comments from children changed, albeit slightly, but enough that it was noticeable. The questions and comments went from "what's wrong with you?" to "oh cool, your legs are like Hiccup's!" I even had one little girl ask me once if I had a pet night fury. They went from being scared of me and my legs, or at the very least concerned for me, to genuinely curious and impressed. While reactions like that did become less and less common over time, they didn't fully go away either. Even today, I occasionally get young kids asking me why I have legs like hiccup. A friend of mine who was born with one arm shorter than the other and without fingers on that side had a similar experience with the movie Finding Nemo. Her disability was a bit more complex than what I described here, and she always found it hard to explain "what happened" to small children, however, after Finding Nemo came out, she was able to simply tell kids "this is my lucky fin, like what nemo has!" and that was enough to take her from someone "scary" to these kids to someone like their favourite characters.
Of course, it's much easier to see the impact positive representation can have on people's perceptions when we're talking about kids media, but it's not exclusive to it either.
When it comes to a minority like the disabled community who are so thoroughly misunderstood by the wider public, misinformation can and does spread easily. What people see and read in the media they consume plays a big roll in how people perceive the real people attached to the stereotypes. We often hear people say "Fiction imitates life" but the reverse can and often is also true, life can imitate and be influenced by fiction, and those of us creating should be mindful of this, especially when we're talking about a group of vulnerable people.
[Thumbnail ID: An illustration of a Great White Shark swimming near the rocky bottom of the ocean, surrounded by silver fish. In the bottom left corner of the image is "The Jaws Effect and what it means for media representation" in big, white bubble text. /End ID]
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arobutchsab · 4 months
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this cute dyke and his hypermobile knees are telling you to buy shirts from @bratprincedyke for thigh Thursday
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Writing fanfic can be a lot like trying to make a recipe that you’ve seen all over social media. Sometimes, you try it and you kill it. Other times, not so much.
You see everyone is raving about how good this recipe is and how much they love this one particular ingredient (we’ll say cheese) that just really makes it amazing. So you think, I can do that, I’m great with cheese!
So, you start cooking. You measure everything just so. You even go a little hard on the cheese because, cheese. You are super proud of your dish. It looks delicious. You think it’s all kinds of tasty. It is, perhaps, the best thing you’ve ever made. You can’t wait to share it with everyone, because c’mon, everyone is raving about this thing and here it is! You made it! And it’s gonna be awesome.
You take it to a potluck with your friends and some people you don’t know. Your friends are like, yeah, this is great! Maybe a couple of people grab a bite, and one of them even tells you it’s pretty good. But there you are, at the end of the night, with your casserole dish still basically full and you’re wondering, what happened? You did everything right, so why didn’t everyone go crazy for it?
Posting a fic is very similar. You see the things people seem to love (a particular trope, for instance) and you give it a try. You think you’ve got all the elements and you put it together perfectly and you put it out there. And then you don’t get the response you were hoping for or expecting. But you used (1) one beloved trope + (2) two characters + a dash of canon + witty banter! Maybe you even sprinkled in a liberal helping of a fandom favorite dynamic. What happened?
Honestly, it’s kind of devastating when a fic flops. You wonder what you did wrong. What did you miss? You’ve seen other people do it and readers just ate it up, so it must be you, right? Are you not a good cook (writer)? Are people tired of trying your dishes (reading your fics)?
Yes, you should always cook (write) for yourself first. But when you decide to share something with other people who have similar tastes/interests, that’s an act of bravery. You’re putting yourself in a vulnerable position by putting this little piece of your heart, of something you love, out for people to see. Of course you want them to like it. You want them to think it’s a tasty treat (whether it be for your tastebuds or eyeballs). You want that pat on the back (kudo). It’s not greedy or inappropriate to crave validation and support.
Writing is a creative, personal process. A lot of writers are frothy little balls of anxiety.
If you’re a fan of someone or their work, let them know. Yes, comments are like crack and everyone wants them, but an emoji or a kudo is extremely gratifying as well. Reblog the snippets you enjoy.  As a fan of something showing the creators you appreciate the time and effort and parts of their heart that they put into what they do matters so, so much.
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cheap-slaw · 2 months
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i-m-abett · 1 month
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RESEARCHING! Please reblog (:
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